There could have been an unpleasant scene then, but someone noticed Agnes Wilson lying face down on the parquet. By the time she had been attended to, Phil had the situation in hand. Father quietly returned to the billiards room to set down his cue stick and contemplate his future. Duncan seated himself in the parlor, and the committee fled the house to spread all manner of reckless gossip, I can guarantee. Her face a study in stone, Mother accepted the dressmaker’s resignation. Our social standing plummeted again.

We didn’t remain long in the parlor. Hawk – No, Duncan now – may have looked every bit the gentleman, but I recognized hollows in the cheek and knew he was hungry. We adjourned to the kitchen except for Mother, who ran around locking up the crystal and silver. I made several sandwiches. While he started on the first one, I cut a thick wedge of apple pie and plopped half a cheese on it.

He ate steadily, almost lovingly, as if it had been days since his last meal. Maybe it was. People in the Midwest have never felt much charity for hungry Indians. He finally finished, wiped his mouth and gave me his full attention.

“It’s Duncan Stuart now, Bright Star.”

I could correct him later. “Why?”

“It is my legal name, and I think it might be easier that way.”

Mother came into the kitchen and sat down beside me. For a fleeting moment, I was reminded of Blue Mountain Woman low over her horse, riding out in front of the Cheyenne scouts. Could I have misjudged my mother? Was she protecting me? I could think about that later.

Still wearing her tennis togs, Eugenie burst into the kitchen, blabbering something about the news up and down the street. She gave Duncan Stuart a huge grin, balanced a tennis ball on her racket, then lobbed it gently in his direction. He caught it with a smile and found himself a firm friend for life. Too short, in Eugenie’s case.

“Duncan, tell us,” I said quietly. “Leave out nothing.”

For the next hour we sat around the kitchen table and listened to as harrowing a tale of survival and starvation as I have ever heard. Hawk sat beside me in the first chair I had ever seen him sitting in, his hand on my knee under the cover of the table. I could think of no objection to that.

He didn’t make it to the Canadian border until the summer of 1878. He was found near death not far from the Bearpaws by a buffalo hunter hungry for conversation. When it soon became manifest that Duncan spoke English and could read, the hunter spared no effort to restore him to health. “I ate a lot of buffalo hump and dried juneberries,” Duncan said.